And it produces!

With the name of my title, I just realized why it must be called produce. Ah-ha!

Anyhow, the garden story continues. I apologize for the two month delay, but my summer job did not allow for the mid-afternoon leisure that my regular job does. And so I'm back, as Gloria Gaynor would shout, and with photos of the garden's progress.

Early spring brought radishes, cilantro, and arugula. Then came early summer with lettuce, beets, peas, collards, chard and oregano. Mid-summer gave us more collards and chard, carrots, cucumbers and broccoli. And at this moment, we have little squash, one nearly ripe tomato, several smaller cucumbers, and one bell pepper. We also still have chard coming up! Some photos:

Solutions

Let's cut to the chase. I have a Facebook account. Yes, I know. My partner makes fun of me daily. What's more, I have a Facebook app on my iPhone. I'm hooked. I read updates from people I haven't spoken to for ten years and stalk others whose lives are far more or far less interesting than mine. And until now, it hasn't really proved useful with the exception of preventing any of us from having real conversations via phone, or even email. It's the lazy man's conversation tool. A way to stay connected, in the least involved way possible. Hey, at least it's not Twitter.

But that was all up until this; A couple weeks ago, I updated my status to say how sad I was to find little green worms eating my plants in the garden. I very quickly received a status comment from an old friend (again, one I probably would not have connected with had it not been for Facebook) who suggested either Cedar or Neem oil as a worm/bug deterrent. I replied and asked how to apply and she wrote back and told me to follow the directions on the bottle to cut it with water, then either mix in a spray bottle or invest in a pressurized garden pump and coat both sides of the leaves of my plants.

So Chris and I walked down to Pistils Nursery, bought some Neem Oil ($15/8 oz) along with some tomato, cucumber, and pepper starts and came back to the house. The bottle has extensive directions, so we were set from there. We bought a garden pump and mixed the oil with water, waited until evening when the air is cooler and the plants are out of direct sun and applied the mixture to both sides of all our leafy plants. Finito! No more worms! What is Neem Oil, you are probably wondering? According to the bottle, "Neem oil is pressed from the seeds of the Indian Neem tree. Neem oil has been used for centuries by people in India. Neem oil is an excellent foliar plant spray." Cedar oil may have been cheaper but they didn't carry it at the nursery. Plus, you only need to apply Neem oil once every 2-4 weeks, so it will last a long time.

That same weekend, we harvested our first vegetable from our first garden. Radishes! Gloriously colored, crisp, spicy radishes. From seed to table in only 24 days. We pulled them up, washed them and sliced them for our salad.















The next day, we pulled up more, washed, and sliced them and added them to a quinoa salad with carrots, cabbage and zucchini for a healthy summer salad.















Cami came over and brought Vodka. I went to the store and brought home fresh fruit, sparkling water, and vermouth for making cocktails. We blended some ice and shook everything up. We cut a melon, set up a table on the porch and played scrabble. It was the perfect Memorial Day.

Garden Update

Our beautiful garden is growing with just a little water each morning and sun every day for the last two weeks! I have found little green worms on some of the leaves of lettuce, broccoli and chard. My goal is to get rid of them without using chemicals. I will keep you posted on how I accomplish this.

Garden Beds, Part One

Perhaps it's because of the economy. Perhaps it's because I was raised by a woman whose organic garden was twice the size of her house, and I took it for granted, never learning to garden. Or perhaps it's because this is the first house I have lived in that has a yard large enough to turn into dinner. I must plant a garden.

When we finally decided to grow our own vegetables, we knew it would be challenging. Research would need to be done. Time (and money) spent. Muscles worked. There is a lot that goes into it, which is why I thought I would document it. If we want to do it again, or if others need someone to lay it out there in a to-the-point description, here it is.

We live in Oregon. The soil is rich. It rains all the time. There are more worms here than coffee drinkers. My friend who has some beautiful raised beds told me, "This is Portland. You stick it in the ground and it'll grow." Of course, it's not quite that simple, but we are lucky. It's not the South where you have to water constantly, or the desert where the soil is dry and depleated of nutrients.

We began by building the beds. Western Red Cedar is supposed to be the best because of its weather resistant nature and long lasting ability to hold up. They say around 20+ years. It's also quite expensive. Right now, around $35.00 a board (we wanted 2x8's). We found that Douglas Fir would last for about 10 years and was only around $1.50 a board. That was more like it. You want to make sure you buy untreated wood and screws for outdoor use. We built the beds link-n-log style, for sturdiness, three boards high, with each finished bed measuring about 8x4.

We dug the dirt down about two inches and dropped the beds into the troughs. We were then ready for the soil. We wanted to mix equal parts clean top soil and compost, but the more we researched the proper mixture, most landscapers recommended a four or five part mixture. We eventually went with a landscaping service who delivered 2.5 cubic yards of dirt containing top soil, compost, steer manure, sand and pumice for $160.00. It seems steep until you start looking around and comparing. If we had a truck and could have picked it up ourselves, it would have saved quite a bit. We spent the next several days shoveling from the pile to the beds, dodging the rain, covering the pile with a tarp. It is advised to let the dirt sit in the beds for a couple weeks before planting. I assume this is to give it time to settle in, allow the worms to crawl from your yard into the new beds, and to give the rain time to penetrate.

That is the stage we are in right now. Waiting. And learning about planting times, strategy and fertilizing. I will update this when we proceed.